Poll: Immigrants say they're a boon to the economy

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, March 28, 2006

(03-28) 15:05 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- Most legal immigrants in the United States do not resent undocumented workers and believe they help the economy by providing low-cost labor, adding a new dimension to the roaring national debate over immigration reform, a national poll released today indicates.

A majority of poll respondents said racism and misinformation are fueling anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. About three-quarters of Latinos, 59 percent of Asians and 49 percent of Africans and Europeans said anti-immigrant feelings are growing.

Most of those polled support offering illegal immigrants temporary work permits and then allowing them to apply for green cards if they pay a fine, learn English and wait for six years, as proposed in legislation being debated today in the Senate.

Some politicians have pitted legal permanent residents and other legal immigrants against illegal immigrants on the theory that legal immigrants would be offended if the nation's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants were granted a quick and easy path to legal status.

But pollster Sergio Bendixen, who was commissioned by New American Media, a San Francisco ethnic media coalition, to sample opinions of the country's 26 million legal immigrants, said reality is more complex.

"This poll says that point of view is incorrect," Bendixen said. Legal immigrants, he said, "have no animosity against the undocumented."

The poll arrives against a tumultuous backdrop: More than a million people across the country have protested immigration reform legislation this month. The Senate is debating broad immigration reforms, including creating new temporary worker permits and new routes to legal permanent residency, while Congress passed a bill to build a fence along 700 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border and make it a felony to be in the United States illegally.

Bendixen & Associates interviewed 800 randomly selected legal immigrants from 47 countries in nine different languages from Feb. 24 to March 21. About 60 percent of those polled are U.S. citizens and 75 percent are registered voters. About 55 percent of respondents were born in Latin America, 30 percent in Asia, and the remainder in Africa and Europe.

The poll's margin of error was 3.4 percentage points overall with higher rates for distinctions among different racial and ethnic groups. The margin of error for Latinos' opinions was 5.5 percentage points; for Asians, Africans and Europeans, it was 6 percentage points.